Contributed by Rob Saunders, P.E. - DBA
DBA has been working on an exciting new project currently under construction in downtown Sacramento, California: the new Sacramento Arena, known as the Entertainment and Sports Center (ESC). The ESC will be a multi-use, publicly owned indoor arena. The Sacramento Kings will be the primary tenant and the arena is expected to host other indoor sports and music concerts, as well. Once completed, the ESC will replace Sleep Train Arena as the home of the Kings. According to Kings Chairman Vivek Ranadive, the 17,500-seat arena will be “one of the most iconic structures on the planet … It’s going to put Sacramento on the world map.”
Turner Construction is the head of development for the new arena. Malcolm Drilling Company was awarded the contract to design and construct the foundation system. DBA worked closely with Malcolm to design Omega piles (a drilled and grouted displacement pile) to serve as the foundations for the new arena. The site presented unique design challenges, including liquefiable soil conditions and existing deep foundations from the demolished … Continue Reading ››

Last spring, DBA conducted a construction phase load test program for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers floodwall improvement project along the Missouri River in Kansas City, Kansas. Located on property owned and maintained by the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities (BPU), the BPU floodwall was slated for structural improvements including a series of buttresses founded on 24-in drilled shafts. As part of the project contract a load test program performed under the direction of a qualified P.E. and D.GE was required. General contractor L.G. Barcus & Sons, Inc., secured our Paul Axtell, P.E., D.GE as the qualified load test expert. DBA teamed up with load testing subcontractor Applied Foundation Testing, Inc., to perform the static load tests.
The load test program requirements included three test shafts, a statically loaded axial test shaft, a statically loaded lateral test shaft, and a combined statically loaded axial and lateral test shaft. The required combined lateral and axial test shaft provided some unique challenges with respect to applying the loads and collecting data. As can be seen in the picture above, the axial load was applied using dead weights.
We have added selected pictures from … Continue Reading ››

Our own Ben Turner (future Dr. Turner!) was lead author on a report by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) on liquefaction and lateral spreading effects on bridges. The report is titled "Evaluation of Collapse and Non-Collapse of Parallel Bridges Affected by Liquefaction and Lateral Spreading". Ben's coauthors are Dr. Scott J. Brandenberg and Dr. Jonathan P. Stewart of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UCLA. From the abstract:

The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center and the California Department of Transportation have recently developed design guidelines for computing foundation demands during lateral spreading using equivalent static analysis (ESA) procedures. In this study, ESA procedures are applied to two parallel bridges that were damaged during the 2010 M 7.2 El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake in Baja California, Mexico. The bridges are both located approximately 15 km from the surface rupture of the fault on soft alluvial soil site conditions. Estimated median ground motions in the area in the absence of liquefaction triggering are peak ground accelerations = 0.27g and peak ground velocity = 38 cm/sec (RotD50 components). The bridges are structurally similar and both are supported on deep foundations, yet they performed differently during the earthquake. … Continue Reading ››

DBA is on the design-build team that is replacing the Goethals Bridge for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ). We are not able to post much about the project or our involvement due to security agreements. However, the PANYNJ has a public website for the project (http://www.panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/goethals-bridge-replacement.html) that has several webcams. As is the case with most big projects these days, the webcams are a common feature and show some great views of the project.
To give you an idea of what the project involves, here is a summary from the PANYNJ site:

The replacement bridge will be located directly south of the existing bridge and will provide:

Three 12-foot-wide lanes in each direction replacing the current two narrow 10-foot-wide lanes

A 12-foot-wide outer shoulder and a 5-foot-wide inner shoulder in each direction

A 10-foot-wide sidewalk/bikeway along the northern edge of the New Jersey-bound roadway

NCHRP Report 697: Design Guidelines for Increasing the Lateral Resistance of Highway- Bridge Pile Foundations by Improving Weak Soils presents design guidance for strengthening of soils to resist lateral forces on bridge pile foundations. Lateral loads may be produced by wave action, wind, seismic events, ship impact, or traffic. Strengthening of soil surrounding the upper portions of piles and pile groups—for example by compaction, replacement of native soil with granular material, or mixing of cement with soil—may be more cost-effective than driving additional piles and extending pile caps as ways to increase the bridge foundation’s capacity to resist lateral forces associated with these loads. This report presents computational methods for assessing soil-strengthening options using finite-element analysis of single piles and pile groups and a … Continue Reading ››

DBA is please to announce the addition of two new members: Robert M. Saunders, P.E. and Benjamin Turner, P.E.

Rob is a graduate of the University of Tennessee (BSCE and MSCE) with 11 years of experience. He began his career at S&ME working with our own Tim Siegel and for the last 8 years has been with GEOServices, LLC in Knoxville. He has a broad design background, specializing in analysis and design of earth retention systems and deep foundations. His experience with earth retention systems includes design and construction of soil nail walls, soldier pile walls, anchored systems, temporary shoring, and mechanically stabilized earth walls. His experience with deep foundation design includes lateral response analysis of deep foundations and design of deep foundation in karst geology. Rob has been involved with several major projects for private companies and public agencies including Foothills Parkway in Blount co., Tennessee, Interstate 240 expansion in Memphis, Tennessee, and Bridgeforth Stadium at James Madison University.

We're almost done with an upgrade to our website. With more than 50% of our site traffic now coming from smartphones and tablets, we needed a responsive web design, i.e., one that provides "an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors)." So the site now detects the type and size of your device and reshapes its presentation of the content while keeping the visual design.
That visual design is new, too. We're using the Twenty Fourteen theme by WordPress, in part because of its 'magazine style' presentation of blog content. At the top of the home page, we now feature six blog posts, each with a featured image or photo. Clicking on the title or the photo of any of those takes you to that blog post where a larger version of the photo and the complete content is displayed. Other blog posts that aren't selected by us to be featured will appear in the usual reverse chronological order on the blog/home page.
Lastly, we're now showing excerpts of … Continue Reading ››

As Robert recently posted, Dan is taking on new roles at the Deep Foundations Institute (DFI) as a member of the DFI Educational Trust Board and as treasurer of the DFI Board of Trustees. Tim Siegel is now stepping in to fill Dan’s former role as co-editor of the DFI Journal. From DFI:

February 24, 2014, Hawthorne NJ: Maney Publishing and the Deep Foundations Institute (DFI) are pleased to announce the appointment of Anne Lemnitzer and Timothy C. Siegel as the new co-editors of DFI Journal: The Journal of the Deep Foundations Institute. They will succeed lead editors Ali Porbaha and Dan Brown, who are stepping down after being editors since the Journal’s inception, and Zia Zafir, who will remain on the editorial board.
Timothy Siegel is a principal engineer with Dan Brown and Associates PC and member of the adjunct faculty at the University of Tennessee. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and has spent over 20 years working in industry. He is a member of the DFI’s Ground Improvement and Seismic and Lateral Loads Committees and has authored or co-authored over 45 technical papers and has presented at conferences … Continue Reading ››

Dan has taken on some new responsibilities with the Deep Foundations Institute (DFI). He has joined both the Board of Directors and the Educational Trust Board as treasurer. From DFI:

Dr. Dan Brown has joined the DFI Educational Trust Board and the DFI Board of Trustees as treasurer, effective January 1, 2014. Dr. Brown is recognized as one of America's leading authorities on the construction and design of deep foundations for transportation structures. After 22 years on the faculty at Auburn University, Dr. Brown remains active in deep foundation practice through his consulting firm, Dan Brown and Associates. He has been recognized with the DFI Distinguished Service Award, ASCE Martin Kapp Foundation Engineering Award and the ADSC Outstanding Service Award.

David Coleman of Underpinning & Foundation Skanska, has been elected to a second five-year term as Trustee (2014-2019), and Roger Healey of Goettle, was elected to second two-year term as At-Large Trustee (2014-2016).